


The Dangers of Adversaries in Ourselves

by HollyShadow88



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Art, Case Fic, M/M, Museums, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Mary's Death, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, the baby doesn't exist, victoria and albert museum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:47:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8243407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollyShadow88/pseuds/HollyShadow88
Summary: When a series of seemingly random murders start popping up at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sherlock and John are called in to investigate.  As Sherlock tries to figure out what the murderer is trying to tell him, John attempts to tell Sherlock what he's wanted to say for years.  Eventually they'll get this whole "communication" thing figured out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this comes from a line from one of Queen Victoria's journals, from Tuesday 29th January 1839 (yes I did that on purpose) - "and Lord M. (Melbourne) said: "Oh! Yes; I think the danger doesn't come so much from our adversaries as from ourselves". You can access all of her journals at [queenvictoriasjournals.org](http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/home.do), which I highly suggest because they're really quite fascinating.

Ellie Lynch hovered at the Cromwell entrance, shifting forward tiredly on her low heels to relieve some of the pressure in her arches. One of their night guards, Tom, sat on the edge of a table nearby, humming quietly to himself as he stared off into the middle distance. Glancing at her watch, Ellie sighed and fumbled with the mouthpiece around her chin.

“Roan? How many more have we got up there?”

Static crackled in her ear and she flinched. Tom shot her a look and she rolled her eyes, causing him to grin. She pulled the piece out of her ear and held the whole thing in front of her face as Roan replied. “Er…another two or three dozen or so? We’ve finally gotten most of them away from the embroidery and mingling over with Anthea at the refreshments table, so Emma’s trying to get the thing covered on her own. Gareth’s doing the best he can to herd the stragglers down to you, but they seem to be enjoying the wine and nibbles.”

Sighing, Ellie glanced up at the sound of the lift opening around the corner. “All right, but we’ve got to get them out by 9:45 at the latest if we’re going to have enough time for cleanup. I’m not dealing with Theo screaming at me first thing in the morning again.”

Roan’s whinging pitched high enough that the noise broke in and out, but Ellie ignored him in favour of showing the trio of guests who meandered over from the lift out. Her plastered smile immediately vanished as soon as they were clambering down the V&A’s front steps. She turned her attention back to Roan and continued to speak. “Last time our team was put in charge of a lecture it was lock up the museum by 11, you know that. This Hardhome event was supposed to be done nearly forty-five minutes ago and we’ve still got minglers, and you’ve just told me there’s only one person attempting to settle the work that’s nearly the size of an entire bloody wall and fragile to boot. You’ve known for weeks you’d be on clear-out duty; if we’re here past time, it’s your arse Theo will be after, not mine.”

“I’ve got it covered!” Emma’s voice interjected, winded and with the distant clattering of heels on marble. “Just finished up with the Great White Walker Wall and headed over to where you are, Roan. Where’s Marcal? I thought he was supposed to be helping you get everyone out and hand out the feedback surveys.”

“Lord knows, I told him to start cleaning up the food tables before I came down,” Ellie replied. She gulped down another sigh, pacing across the shadows lying in the floor from the pair of opened main doors. The Hardhome Embroidery was the first talk she had been in charge of organizing and ended up being a greater challenge than expected. The Embroiders Guild originally only wanted the piece to be on display for the original weekend back in March, making the talk at the V&A simply a presentation with a few behind-the-scenes photographs and materials that Anthea would bring at her discretion. With more than a bit of encouragement on Ellie’s part, however, they’d managed to get the full piece in for a single night’s viewing, somehow maneuvering the embroidery up to their fourth floor lecture theatre while still making room for the nearly one hundred guests signed up for the event. Anthea hadn’t been entirely enthusiastic about the idea, but with the right parameters put around it and just a touch of flattery, Ellie succeeded. Now they just needed to get the last of the guests out into the London night and she could finally consider the evening a success.

“You set Marcal on the food? That’s why he’s vanished, he’s probably off flirting with Lucy down in the privacy of the café with nobody around,” Roan muttered. Ellie let the arm holding the mouthpiece fall to her side, using the other hand to rub fiercely at the bridge of her nose. She glared out at the traffic absently mindedly before squaring her shoulders, lifting the piece up to bark orders into it once more. Before she could do more than open her mouth, however, a screech echoed up from the stairs that led down towards Europe & the World. Tom scrambled to straighten from his leaning pose, quick to grab at his own headpiece to call the guard on duty in that section. Seconds later, a pair of white faced guests rounded the corner and ran down the front steps into the night. Ellie glanced over at Tom before she took off in the opposite direction, heading towards where she thought the scream had come from.

Europe & the World sat right around the corner from the Cromwell entrance, but down a slight hallway and a small set of stairs that separated it from the entrance itself. The lift that the guests from the talk should have been using took them directly past the stairs, but with the lowered lights and fewer employees around due to the museum itself being closed, Ellie wasn’t surprised that a pair sneaked off into a room for a private snog. When she approached the top of the steps, she stared down into the semi-darkness, squinting in the hopes of spotting whatever had startled the pair. Tom approached moments later, a torch in his hand, and prodded her in the arm with it. She took it without a word and skipped down the steps, her heels clacking as she went.

Recently, the museum’s sole Bernini statue had been relocated to take precedence over the front of Europe 1600-1815. Neptune and Triton used to live among its fellow marble figures in the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Galleries, but Theo and others with more influence than Ellie decided they were better placed among their time period rather than their materials. Ellie admitted that the piece cut an impressive figure, the white of the marble bright against the dark violet walls, but she still found herself startling when she entered the room before she realized what the statue was. The same happened now as the torch’s light shot across Triton’s bent chest. She studied him briefly, about to move on to study the rest of the room, when she realized that the statue that should normally hold two figures now appeared to have three.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, stumbling back into Tom, who stared up at the statue in equal alarm. She stood frozen while Tom reached around at the wall, searching for the lights until they came on to blind them both. He swore under his breath as they took in the sight and Ellie tightened her grip on the torch, eyes fixed on the streak of blood now decorating Triton’s face from the body draped across his back. “Jesus **Christ** , that’s a **body**. Tom, call 999, that’s an actual fucking **body** on the goddamn **Bernini**.”

[Location of the First Body](http://futureofthemasses.tumblr.com/post/151544888408/first-image-for-the-dangers-of-adversaries-in)

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously this has included quite a bit of research, so I wanted to include that here as well! [The event that I used actually took place on September 30th](https://shop.vam.ac.uk/whatson/index/view/id/3533/event/Game-of-Thrones---The-Hardhome-Embroidery/dt/2016-09-30/eType/1/free/2) and [and I learned more about it here](http://handembroidery.com/game-of-thrones-an-embroidery). Obviously Anthea is actually real and ironically her name is super appropriate. I've been to the V&A a lot, but I used the digital map quite a bit, as well as the V&A website in general and Wikipedia.


End file.
